Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
them very well and it's a little unclear who is responsible for them.” 103 In
other words, the drains continue to be crucial to maintaining habitable
conditions aboveground, but their subterranean character makes them
diffi cult to manage. A major storm in 1996 resulted in three hundred
landslides and caused damage to municipal property in excess of $30 mil-
lion as well as an undetermined amount of private property damage. The
municipal government subsequently created a comprehensive strategy to
address landslide issues. 104 A contemporary map of landslide and liquefac-
tion zones in Seattle shows a close correlation between the land-water in-
terface and the shifting landscape (see fi gure 5.9). The Promethean Project
did not separate the city from nature but rather created new dependencies
that required continuous management. As Kaika notes, “modernization is
an ongoing project in which natures, cities, and people are woven together
in an inseparable dialectic of creation and destruction.” 105
The Unanticipated Consequences of Economic Growth
The big engineering projects undertaken since the late nineteenth century
in Seattle were intended to improve upon nature and create a city that
could prosper while enjoying the advantages of a beautiful natural setting.
Instead, the municipal government created a hybrid ecotechnical landscape
that was at once controlled and out of control, predictable and unpre-
dictable. 106 But the seemingly improved landscape created by Thomson
and the municipal government would lead to unprecedented population
growth and urban expansion in subsequent decades. Seattle's population
increased steadily from the turn of the century, starting with fewer than
one hundred thousand residents in 1900 and growing to over fi ve hundred
thousand residents by 1960 (see fi gure 5.10).
The tipping point for population growth in Seattle and the surround-
ing areas would come in the 1940s, as water quality in Lake Washington
began to change visibly due to sewage inputs from Seattle and the sur-
rounding suburbs. The lake, the second largest in the state with a length
of twenty-two miles and a width varying from one to four miles, had
also undergone “improvement” as Seattle grew. 107 While the Duwamish
industrial channel was being created in 1914 to the south of the central
business district, similar construction projects were underway to remold
the hydrologic fl ows north of the city. In 1916, the municipal government
completed a ship canal to connect Puget Sound to Lake Union and Lake
Washington via a series of locks. 108 Completion of the canal realized a
long-held dream by the municipal government and business interests to
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